Miss Havisham
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Miss Havisham is a pivotal character in the Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations (1861).
Miss Havisham is a wealthy and eccentric spinster. She lives in a decaying estate, Satis House, with her young and pretty adopted daughter, Estella.
She was abandoned on her wedding day by her intended spouse, and from that time on secluded herself in her mansion, receiving people of her choosing and never setting foot outdoors again.
She adopted Estella as a baby to raise as a woman of culture and breeding who would inherit her wealth. She trains her adopted daughter to treat men as objects, as she felt she was treated, "to save her from my fate," but in fact she manipulates Estella as a surrogate to avenge herself on men.
Miss Havisham's and Estella's interaction with Pip, the protagonist of the story, a poor working-class boy called by Miss Havisham to her estate to entertain her, forms one of the central threads of the plot.
Miss Havisham is a contradictory character in literature and in the context of her time. Unlike most unmarried women of the era, her wealth gives her tremendous power, which she uses to coax others to do her bidding and to advance her aims, yet she allows her disappointment at being jilted to ruin her life, thus giving the man who spurned her ultimate power over her. She lays waste to her estate, symbolic of herself, and tries to spread her cynicism and malaise to everyone she touches.